Purge
by Drakaina's Flight
Summary: Their ruins had seemed eons old, noble but crumbling. Their memories hadn't. The vividness of their accounts left her confused, anguished perhaps, if she were emotional enough anymore to feel it. How close had she come? It wasn't always easy to say goodbye, but it pained her some way to think they had left long before she'd had the chance to miss them.


They had all died quickly, she was sure; their own security mechs had malfunctioned, sprayed blast after blast of white-hot metal, and knocked them all down into the screaming blueness below.

At least, that was the only conclusion she'd been able to come to as she climbed higher and higher up, the buzzing of the shielded glass window like an insect's whine in her left ear. All the turrets had been chattering and twirling uncontrollably in their sockets when she'd all but blown the door open, and though they had targeted her with the same mindlessness as all these hive-minded creatures, it was a simple matter to blow them all open, sparking and smoking.

So why then did she feel like she was being watched?

Dead pirates' bodies littered the singing floor. A mangled limb had stuck out here or there on her entrance, and now, minutes later, they were covered in what looked like soft blue moss. Soon not even these lumps would remain; soon the floor would be carpeted in what seemed innocuous, gentle crystal again, crawling ever so slowly up the walls…

Of course it would be reaching out here, now, still. The price of locking the impact crater away had been too much already, and now there was no one else left who would see this dreadful canyon sealed off too. No one left but her to hold the poison back. It was only a matter of time before it grew strong enough to come crawling out of any hole, no matter who had put it there. Faded writing on the ruin's walls and scraps of data stolen from the logs in this abandoned cavern had told her as much: they had all run out of time, one way or another.

But not her; not yet.

Her boots made a _clang_ on the thin metal platforms and one of their number barked in alarm somewhere above her. Disinterestedly she wondered how not all of them had died after all, though perhaps this one had sought higher ground in the commotion, and was afraid now of her approach. Not that it mattered; she was of a mind to see this one dead too, as thoroughly as she would see any task through… though this one came with a shred more personal satisfaction.

She didn't need the targeting reticule to kill it. The motion was automatic: one squeeze of the trigger, two and a half seconds' wait, and the space pirate was slammed in the chest by the brilliant yellow projectile as it turned to face her. By the time it hit the floor she was walking again, across the next narrow beam to the next platform, this one filled with explosive crates. A missile burst against the bottom-most canister and the whole pile blew up with a roar, but it still couldn't drown the creature's screams as the floor began eating it alive.

For whatever reason she paused at the door to listen, and then to look: beneath it all she could hear the floor screaming too, a jumpy, crackling hiss that she didn't need the suit's built-in radiation detector to hear. A breach in her enemy's armor glistened with blood, no doubt where she'd struck it, and where it - judging by its cries - had hit the ground. Soon its breaths turned to gasps and it slumped onto the floor, twitching as the raw phazon claimed its pitiful life.

Of course she could have hit it with a more powerful projectile, but it would have been a waste of ammunition and good sense besides. She'd plumbed the depths of these caverns by now, seen the rock ripped up raw and ragged, had killed whatever the phazon hadn't and stolen its deadliness for herself. There was nothing left here but a writhing pit full of dead bodies that would be consumed before they ever got the chance to rot. After all, what point would there be in purging the crater too, if she didn't first make sure that none of these parasites had the chance to stop her or bring back the poison that so easily grew back? No; it all had to be rid of, and they were a plague too, to be eradicated all the same.

The uppermost door hissed open to admit more of them and she turned to face the new throng of soldiers, the line of them nimbly crossing the catwalks above and readying their differently-colored weapons.

Well… she'd turned their little mine into another cage at least, and soon when she killed the beast responsible they wouldn't have much reason to linger here – either because they would have left or because she'd killed them all.

It would be the second one, she realized as she lifted her cannon and clicked the middle trigger once, twice, three times… Missiles wouldn't do anything to their new armors unless she combined them with her beam weapons first, but she wasn't in the mood to watch them burn like that – that part was coming soon enough – amusing though it would have been. It saved her the time of cycling the cannon through its phases anyway. The explosives bounced away from their chestplates but one or two of them leaped back; the first crushed its ankle on landing and toppled, screeching, to its death below. The second wheeled its arms around comically and clipped one of its fellows and sent them both down, wailing; the last raised their weapons hesitantly, having held their ground, and began to open fire.

Excessive force, she decided then, might be the correct response after all: a purple blast from the cannon caused two of them to go down at once, each flailing hysterically. The floor claimed them too and the third pirate slipped, having no need of her assistance, but caught itself on the railing and somehow still managed to fire its weapon. A face full of plasma so hot its helmet melted off ensured it would join the others, and the last turned to run but she froze it in its armor and gave it another push to send it crashing down.

Then, surely, there were none left.

She peered over the edge again and found the sight more eerie than before. Apparently the poison had an appetite for living bodies, and bleeding wounds were its preferred vector. It didn't surprise her though. She'd known from the beginning what a terrible predator it was, and by now seeing it in action wasn't as shocking as it had been.

The door above her closed with a quiet hum and save for the phazon, all was quiet again.

It didn't matter now, whether they wanted to chase her or not – if they had anyone left to keep up the struggle, anyway. They'd stolen her technology for their own betterment but she'd stolen it back and more, and now it was only a matter of time before their whole operation here went up with a catastrophic explosion. Were she a more forgiving person she might have pitied them, but even so, she didn't imagine anything would stop her hunting them down wherever they hid. First this strange and terrible parasite descended on verdant Tallon IV, and now these claw-fingered lizards had followed it, perhaps tracked it even, all the way to their own deaths. That hadn't surprised her either; the pirates were an awfully predictable lot. She had seen the outcome from the outset. The frigate Orpheon had only been the beginning.

Well she was going to be the end, now, and expected them all to retreat after - on account of being terrified or moldering in the shrieking blue, she didn't care which. She had something to do, and it didn't matter which one of their yellow-eyed monsters got in her way next. Without their precious phazon it was probable their spines would snap under their own weight, their ankles crack apart and their bones turn to liquid. The unenhanced soldiers might last a little longer, but they hadn't any way to send a distress signal, and so the local fauna would have the fortune of picking over their remains.

Even if they could send for help, she wondered if their so-called Command wouldn't simply terminate them all for a job poorly done. That seemed to be their practice, from what stolen information she'd gleaned off their dataports. The punishment for disobedience was termination. The punishment for making a mistake was termination. The punishment for wasting time, inadvertently or not, was termination, and on the list went. It was almost a mystery why they hadn't already done her job for her. There might still be a few scattered here or there, ready to fight a losing battle, but their aptly-named Elites were dead; what else could they do?

But it wouldn't be the first time they had found a way.

Fine then; let them. And if any more came squealing into her path they wouldn't have a mouth to squeal with much longer, or a brain to try for that matter.

She turned to leave again and nothing stopped her now. The elevator in the next room carried her up without complaint, and the tunnels beyond it were empty too. The purple-skied canyon above them reeked of oily, unnatural smoke, billowing up out of the drills stationed there. The only other things around were burnt corpses strewn about, some slumped against the walls that had broken their backs and others with gaping holes in their chests, or else simply missing their heads.

It was a fitting end for them: a forgotten pile of corpses trapped in an abandoned mine, sure to collapse in on itself soon. Something good and final.

She had only ever left death in her wake, but it was a thing she didn't often regret. They didn't deserve to have anything of theirs nor keep anything of hers; their reverse engineered prototypes, if they cared to preserve them, would be all they had, and they were as likely as not to dismiss the scrappy technology as inferior and useless someday soon. On the off chance that more of them came here and found the broken ruin in her wake, she'd taken the liberty of destroying every last bit of data stored on their computers. Their logs were all safe in her extensive logbook, of course, but it would be impossible for them to get hold of _that._

As for the artifacts they'd stolen, she'd retrieved them all, intending to make good on all her promises – now that she had made good on her promise to these sewer-dwelling lizards, it was time she carried through with the task her predecessors had entrusted her with.

Their ruins had seemed eons old, noble but crumbling. Their memories hadn't. The vividness of their accounts left her confused, anguished perhaps, if she were emotional enough anymore to feel it. How close had she come? It wasn't always easy to say goodbye, but it pained her some way to think they had left long before she'd had the chance to miss them. Surely the phazon trapped in the crater, that cursed and ugly scar, could not have been there long, or else she severely underestimated the ability of the Chozo to keep it bound firmly in place. Would she have been able to save them still, if she'd come only a little while earlier?

How much earlier? A year? Two? Of course it didn't matter now, but she would feel amiss if she didn't leave them a cleaner home than she had found it. She would leave it cleaner for the animals that would need it, even if they didn't appreciate her intrusion on their territory. It was all she could do, and hope that her ancestors here would forgive her for not being ready soon enough.

There was no saving them now, but that didn't mean she didn't feel obligated to _try._ Their homes and lives had been stolen, but even so it wasn't a total loss. She could save one tiny chip of stone out of an entire monument: steal those homes back, destroy what had pushed out their owners. Leave it lonelier but safer than before.

That was the reason she came here, after all. Wherever the space pirates went she would be looking, and whatever they were doing she was bound to stop it. Wherever the Chozo had left their mark, she would be looking too; any chance of reunion had long since passed, but their faith in her surpassed the end of their own lives. They had known she would be coming, somehow, and they had left everything they had for her.

Faith was reunion enough.


End file.
